The Secret to Outrageous Travel

Do you want a spectacular finale to your life experience?  Something to remember when you aren’t so mobile?  It doesn’t take a trust-fund or a fairy godmother.  All it takes is a decision that you aren’t going to put up with boring any more and you, too can enjoy outrageous travel.

Blame it on Tim Ferriss

I don’t need this. Do you?

I was two years into my second retirement before I heard of Tim Ferriss. Before reading the Four Hour Work Week, I thought that a good vacation was two weeks and my retirement lifestyle reflected that mindset. It included the usual amenities: hotel, rental car, restaurants and all the glitz and overhead that goes with it. It was pricey. So we staid home. Since your income drops with retirement, we couldn’t afford long vacations in retirement either so nothing much changed. Theoretically, we had the time but still not the money for a cruise, tour or resort. We aren’t really cruise or tour people but we were brainwashed. We didn’t see the other options. We were blind to the possibilities of spending time in new places and living local instead of like a tourist.  Outrageous travel is not extravagant travel.

Eliminate the layers of expensive and limiting amenities and you eliminate major costs. Reduce the costs and you can afford to spend real time traveling instead of taking the two hour tour. Once my mind was opened, I was hooked on the possibilities but getting started was still hard. We were old. We hadn’t been out of country for 40 years. We didn’t speak any language but English. We weren’t poor but our discretionary income was modest. Could we make this work? My wife had real doubt and even I had concerns. Still, time was wasting. If we were going to do it, there was no time to dither.

Persuading my wife.

I was willing to go for broke and just do it. Whatever the consequences, it would be an adventure-maybe the last in our lives. My wife was more cautious. Getting her buy-in would take finesse. I wanted to start with a month somewhere. I didn’t much care where but the first barrier was getting my wife’s approval. I suggested Rome. I had spent six weeks in Italy 40 years ago and I was sure that there was so much to see in Rome that one month would not be enough. My wife balked. She had never seen Rome and imagined that it was Columbus with ruins. I next suggested Amsterdam. She was indifferent. Then somebody said Venice and the dam broke. She agreed to a shorter stay in Venice to test the waters and we were off.We rented an apartment, used frequent flyer miles to book a flight and made our first retirement lifestyle trip last March, eleven wonderful days in Venice.  Now we understood outrageous travel.

Decisions have consequences

There were amazing consequences from taking that first trip. First, my wife no longer thinks that one month is a long time for a visit. She was very unhappy to leave Venice after only 11 days. NOW She has no reservations about the length of our next trip. Second, she is in love with Italy. She will visit anyplace in Italy without reservation. In fact, she insisted that our next trip be to Rome which she now understands is just as unique as Venice.  Up with Italy!

What did we learn?

The biggest lesson was that what we knew about travel was wrong. We learned that the the value of travel was not following the herd in swarms but blending into the local scene. We learned that the expensive tourist facilities only filter your experience. We had our apartment in a neighborhood away from the bustle of San Marco and used local shops, restaurants and markets. Our apartment was cheaper than a hotel and allowed us to eat in inexpensively most of the time. Because we used our airline miles for the travel, our only expense was the apartment. Food was perhaps more expensive than at home but not that much. We were also more cautious this first trip. The apartment we rented was more expensive than we needed.  We could fine tune next time. And Italy is grand.

All in all the trip was a success. The things I worried about before never happened. The

VENICE, ITALY

flight was pleasant enough for economy travel. Twelve hour flights are bearable, especially when they are overnight (and you get some sleeping pills from the doc before). Foreign airports are fine, even if you don’t speak their language. We still aren’t too old to have an adventure.  Outrageous travel was still an option for us.

Are you up for outrageous travel?

I’m sharing this experience because I want to make you think. Maybe you think it is too late for you to have an adventure and see the world. Maybe you think that it takes big bucks to travel. Maybe you are afraid of what people will say. I suggest that you just let your fantasies flow. Where have you always wanted to go? What memories would you like to cherish when you finally get old?

We learned a lot making this trip and we are using the lessons learned to make the next one even better. I will be sharing some of those lessons here in future posts and if you have questions or comments, I can respond either in the comments or as future topics.